Dances of the Capital

My study abroad program was nice enough to buy 2nd-class tickets for the Miyako Odori on Thursday for anyone who wanted them, and so naturally I signed up. The truth is, I had wanted 1st-class tickets with the additional tea service, where you can be served matcha and mochi by a maiko on a special plate that you get to keep, but there were no tickets left when the program called, so I took what I could get. 2nd-class tickets have no assigned seat, and are located on the second floor of the Gion Theatre, which is partitioned into tatami-mat boxes, which are supposed to fit about 10 people each. The Miyako Odori is the annual dance program put on by the Gion geisha district, and originally started to revitalize Kyoto after the capital was moved to Tokyo in the mid-19th century. This is one of the only chances that the average person has to see the geisha and maiko of Gion perform live. The program this year was made up of pieces based on ‘The Tale of Genji’, as this is its 1000th anniversary. The program opened, with a dance by all of the maiko in the district in bright blue kimono arrayed along the two walkways on either side of the (1st floor) audience. The next piece was more like a mini-play than a dance, and was the story of the Genji chapter ‘Young Murasaki’. After that was ‘Yuugao’ which was a more dance-oriented piece with three geisha and four maiko, the Geisha with ‘yuugao’ (a flower that looks like a white morning glory, I’m not certain of the English name) patterned kimono, and the maiko with beautiful yuugao flower hair ornaments. The next piece was ‘The Lady Aoi’, one of the more famous chapters from Genji, that was also rather play-like, but suitably creepy. The story is basically that Genji’s wife (Lady Aoi) is attacked by the vengeful (living) spirit of one of his (many) mistresses, the Lady Rokujo. In the original story, Rokujo’s spirit kills Aoi, but in most all adaptations that I’ve seen for theatre, this one included, the spirit is scared away by Buddhist chanting. This piece had rather modern (in my opinion) lighting used to show Rokujo’s attacks, including coloured and strobe-y lights. I actually found this a little disconcerting, as every other part of the performance was very traditional. The next piece was another one with all of the maiko, this time against a beautiful backdrop of Kyoto in the autumn. After this came a dance piece about ‘Ukifune’, a winter scene, which set up the grand finale which had every dancer onstage, and all surrounded by cherry blossoms. It was a lot of fun, and I am very glad that I went. I’ve been reading about these performances for years, so to actually see one was extremely exciting.
-You can still see quite well from the second floor, only the very beginnings of the walkways are obscured.
-I was surprised at the number of maiko that performed, there are 30 listed in the program, which is quite a lot.
-Like in Kabuki, the stage that is used for geisha performances has several platforms that can be used for lifting set pieces and dancers to stage level from below.